01 April 2007
When Dr Domingo Madulid sent me the paper on the new species of Rafflesia from Panay to be published in Folia, I was very sceptical. In fact I was sceptical until yesterday! The reason was simple: there was very little features in this new species, called R. lobata from R. manilana. I blog about this in December last year, here.
However, my good friend and companion, Dr K Fletcher of Wildsidephotography returned from Panay Is last week with splendid photographs of R. lobata in the wild. I was given a copy of his photos and reproduced here.
I have no doubt after viewing these photos that those lobbed diaphragm is an artifact. The colors of the the diaphragm and the disc are also not the same as R. manilana. I can confirm now that this species is a good one. Despite my initial sceptism, I am now comvinced that this species is in no way the same to R manillana. Fletcher also reported that the R. lobata grows on limestone hill, which is not a case for R. manilana.
I got to visit this place !
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